Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
Behav Cogn Psychother. 2010 Jan;38(1):59-66. doi: 10.1017/S1352465809990543.
There is overwhelming evidence that anxiety is associated with the tendency to interpret information negatively. The causal relationship between this interpretive bias and anxiety has been examined by modifying interpretive bias and examining effects on anxiety. A crucial assumption is that the effect of the procedure on anxiety is mediated by change in interpretive bias rather than being a direct effect of the procedure. Surprisingly, this had not previously been tested.
The aim is to test whether altered interpretive bias, following Cognitive Bias Modification of Interpretations (CBM-I), affected anxiety.
Mediational path analyses were conducted to test the hypothesis that changes in anxiety are due to changes in interpretive bias. A separate experiment was conducted to test which elements of the procedure could be responsible for a direct mood effect.
Results from mediation analyses suggested that changes in trait anxiety, after performing CBM-I, were indeed caused by an altered interpretive bias, whilst changes in state anxiety appear to be caused by the procedure itself. The subsequent experiment showed that state anxiety effects could be due to exposure to valenced materials.
Changed state anxiety observed after CBM-I is not a valid indicator of a causal relationship. The finding that CBM-I affected interpretive bias, which in turn affected trait anxiety, supports the assumption of a causal relationship between interpretive bias and trait anxiety. This is promising in light of possible clinical implications.
有大量证据表明，焦虑与负面信息解读倾向有关。通过改变解释性偏见并观察其对焦虑的影响，已经研究了这种解释性偏见与焦虑之间的因果关系。一个关键的假设是，该程序对焦虑的影响是通过解释性偏见的改变来介导的，而不是该程序的直接影响。令人惊讶的是，这一点以前从未被检验过。
目的是检验认知解释偏差修正（CBM-I）后，改变解释性偏见是否会影响焦虑。
进行中介路径分析以检验以下假设，即焦虑的变化是由于解释性偏见的变化引起的。进行了一项单独的实验，以检验程序的哪些元素可能会对直接的情绪产生影响。
中介分析的结果表明，在进行 CBM-I 后，特质焦虑的变化确实是由于解释性偏见的改变引起的，而状态焦虑的变化似乎是由程序本身引起的。随后的实验表明，状态焦虑的影响可能是由于接触到有偏向的材料。
在 CBM-I 之后观察到的变化的状态焦虑不是因果关系的有效指标。CBM-I 影响解释性偏见，而解释性偏见又反过来影响特质焦虑的发现，支持了解释性偏见与特质焦虑之间存在因果关系的假设。鉴于可能存在的临床意义，这是有希望的。
